


The Young and Reckless

by Gem_Gem



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Drunken Shenanigans, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Het and Slash, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Teen Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 02:06:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4001779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gem_Gem/pseuds/Gem_Gem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John was sure he’d remember such a peculiar looking boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, another Unilock story. I have enjoyed these in the past and I thought to give one a try myself.
> 
> Let me know what you think, leave a comment, and if you all like it I might carry it on!
> 
> * Hurrah for the Doctor Who reference.

John grimaced as he was brought back from the dark blanket of slumber into the bright, blinding, painful light of the morning and rolled over roughly with a grunt, covering his head with his arms and shielding his eyes. His head was still fuzzy with sleep and drink, the memories of the night before twisted and wibbly-wobbly. John grinned stupidly and huffed a chuckle. What was the timey wimey anyway?

With a lethargic stretch, John braced himself for the sting of sunlight and lifted his head again, squinting roughly and throwing an arm out clumsily for his phone at his bedside. Unable to judge distance properly in his current state John’s hand missed by a mile and slapped down onto the bed next to him, or it would have if it hadn’t have come into contact with the bare, pale, dip of someone’s back.

The person beside John snorted and then shot awake in an instant with a resulting groan. John jerked back in surprise, still sluggish and not in total control of his body, and blinked rapidly against the light to stare.

As John’s blurred vision cleared and his focus sharpened, eyes adjusting to the sun, John saw that the person next to him was male and currently lying on his stomach clutching his head. John ran his gaze down the boy’s exposed back, following the line of his spine with a frown that only deepened at the jump and flex of muscle and sinew, and bunched his eyebrows together tightly. Mind slow, John returned his eyes to the boy’s head and leaned close to peer through the dark curls tangled and mussed between the boy’s long, fingers.

“Um. Hello? Uh, who are you?” John asked in a mumble, voice croaky and husky from sleep.

The boy dropped his forehead to the mattress, reaching across to nab one of John’s pillows, “Sherlock,” he replied his muffled voice deeper and huskier than John’s own.

“Right…?” John exhaled, snatching the pillow back.

“We met at the party last night. I know Lestrade…and those that gravitate around him,” the boy clarified in a long, drawn-out sigh, turning his head to peer over at John through a mass of curls.

John nodded curtly, “Right…okay, and the reason why you’re naked and in my bed is because?”

“Half-naked.”

John rolled his eyes and winced at the resulting headache, “Why are you _half-naked_ then? And in my bed. With me.”

The boy with the weird name leaned up on his elbows and peered over at John through trembling lashes, “Could you possibly shut the curtains? My head feels like it was hit by a cricket ball.”

John opened his mouth to retort and tell the boy that, no he would not shut the bloody curtains, but the idea held some appeal for his own banging headache, so he snapped his jaw back closed and threw back the covers. On his feet he swayed and fumbled, leaning heavily into a wall to breath through a large bout of dizziness and nausea. As he waited for it to pass he took into account his own half-nakedness and frowned, reaching down to self-consciously tug on the waistband of his lucky red underwear in embarrassment.

A groan floated up from the floor to his left and John glanced over to see Greg, Mike, Bill, and a few others he couldn’t seem to recognise or remember, strewn about his bedroom. Empty bottles and cans of beer and other substances littered the spaces between them, some of the bottles weakly dripping into the carpet. Everyone was in some state of undress, lost shirts, shoes, and trousers thrown haphazardly in the corner messily. Greg groaned again and turned onto his side, a flood of cards falling from his grasp.

John blinked slowly at the sight and then moved the remaining few steps to close the curtains with jerky, uncoordinated motions. When he got back to his bed, crawling over to sink into the mattress again, the boy had turned on his side and had pulled the covers up so only the top of his head was visible, black curls contrasting with the white linen. 

“Oi!” John grumbled, grabbing a handful of the sheets and yanking them off. “Get out of my bed! Go sleep on the floor with Greg.”

“Who?” The weird named boy asked as he jerked into a foetal position and then leisurely uncurled, sitting up and finally fully facing John with a glower.

“What do you mean, “who?”” John said, jerking his head in Greg’s direction. “Greg. Greg Lestrade. I thought you said you knew him?”

The boy nodded slowly and somehow dismissively, and pushed back his hair with both hands, “I do.”

Confused, John stared at him. The boy, Sherlock, was lean and lithe, all sharp cheekbones and long limbed. John hadn’t seen him before, couldn’t remember even meeting the boy the night before as he had stated they had, John was sure he’d remember such a peculiar looking boy. His eyes were a mixture of colours, all blue and grey and green, and one speck of hazel. Heterochromia iridum, his sobering mind supplied. Though he looked young John assumed he was around the same age as John himself, within the drinking age at any rate, as Greg would never had let him drink. 

Sherlock was wearing just a pair of black boxer shorts and dark grey socks, and John took another look at his own half-nakedness, as well as those in the room with a puzzled expression.

“We played strip poker,” Sherlock provided when noticing. “Well, technically it changed halfway through, as none of us know how to properly play poker, so we changed it to strip Stop the Bus instead.”

“How do you remember so much?” John asked, running a hand through his short hair.

Sherlock rubbed his eyes and yawned, “I don’t remember everything. Just bits and pieces.”

“More than me.”

“Clearly.”

John shot him a look, “Still not answered why you’re in my bed though? Remember that bit?”

“I believe you offered,” Sherlock told him, turning his eyes on John. They were clearer than before, intense and calculating and inspecting, and John shivered involuntarily, feeling fully exposed.

“Offered? I offered you my bed?” John snorted. “Are you having a laugh?”

Pulling his knees up Sherlock gestured with a flick of his fingers and one shouldered shrug, “There wasn’t enough room on the floor, according to you, so you offered me your bed. Is it my fault that you don’t recall, and that you yourself got into the bed with me?”

“Yes,” John replied ridiculously after a moment of silence, crossing his arms. “You could have declined. Said, “thank you very much but no, I think I see a small space in the corner there where I can nap.” Didn’t you know that sometimes people just offer out of politeness, not really expecting to be taken up on the offer because that person is also polite enough to decline?”

Sherlock’s dark eyebrows bunched suddenly and he screwed up his face, wrinkling his nose, “What?”

“I’m not one to share the bed with another bloke. I have nothing against any of that, but I’d rather wake up to the soft curves of a woman. Particularly a blonde.”

“You were drunk, as was I. Evidently, in your drunken state, you didn’t care with whom you shared your bed,” Sherlock told him. 

John scowled at him with grumpiness and shuffled close to lean over Sherlock for his phone, checking the time and the unread messages from some girl he didn’t remember giving his number to. How much drink had he even had? He almost never drank so much that he couldn’t remember what had happened. That wasn’t him. His sister, sure, but not him.

“I would delete her number if I were you,” Sherlock rumbled in his ear, having leaned close and peered over to John’s phone.

John lifted his head at the same moment as Sherlock and they stared at one another for a few moments before John replied with a furrowed brow, “Why?”

Sherlock pointed one long, elegant, pale finger at the screen, “Because she recently split up with her boyfriend, has an STI and takes a range of drugs, possibly Ecstasy and Speed.”

John continued to stare until Sherlock arched his eyebrow with a small quirk of his mouth, “I know her, or rather, I know of her. Not good.”

“Right,” John nodded. “She still has my number though.”

“Leave that to me,” Sherlock told him with a smile that John couldn’t help but return.

“What are you going to do? Steal her phone, delete my number and sneak it back without her noticing?”

“Yes.”

John sat back on his haunches and burst out laughing, clutching his head at the resounding ache, but unable to stop. Sherlock’s smile widened and he winced, rubbing his forehead as he joined in with John, his laughter a booming rumble that only deepened with amusement when Greg complained and threw a rolled up shirt at them both. John dissolved into giggles and ducked from another clothing projectile, this time lobbed by Mike, and shared a cheerful look with Sherlock.


	2. Fire and smoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John knew the reason he'd stopped and looked wasn't because he'd noticed Sherlock, but because he'd seen who was seated beside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heres another chapter for those interested in this little story. 
> 
> Leave a comment and let me know what you think and if you want more. Not all the characters have been introduced yet...nor has the relationships.

After kicking everyone out of his room, his new friend Sherlock included, John didn’t see him or anyone else - but Mike - again until a day or two later when John was strolling the University grounds looking for a place to eat outside, unable to let a good, summers day go by without soaking up some sun. 

Sherlock was standing in the shade of a huge oak tree, leaning against the trunk in a purple shirt with its sleeves rolled to his elbows, and a pair of dark denim jeans with scuffed knees. Both articles of clothing seemed overly tight, the buttons on his shirt straining where they met in the centre of his chest, the first several buttons open to reveal the white expanse of the boy’s chest. The jeans were almost skin-tight, clinging to the long length of each leg snugly; a silvery studded belt glinted in its hoops, but John was certain it was only there for decoration. On Sherlock’s feet were a pair of large, black boots, and lying beside them was what looked like a folded trench coat. John remembered seeing such a coat lying haphazardly on his room floor when the strewn clothing was organised, and was sure he saw Sherlock take it when he left.

Reclining on the tree beside him was a girl, one so beautiful that John realised she was probably the real reason he had stopped dead in his tracks, not Sherlock. Her skin was just as pale white as Sherlock’s, only amplified and contrasted by the flush of blusher, the slick, black swipes of eyeliner, and the deep red of her lipstick. Her hair was also almost the exact same shade of dark brunette as Sherlock’s and was gracefully tied up onto her head in an elegant bun, exposing the feminine arc of her neck. The clothes she wore were supple and sophisticated, the tight, black skirt and matching sleeveless top complimented her alluring curves. The heeled shoes on her feet were red, the same shade as her lipstick, and on closer inspection, her nail vanish. John could hardly take his eyes off her.

As John moved closer, he noticed for the first time that Sherlock was smoking, the cigarette poised between his index and middle finger, smoke swirling and dancing from the end only to whirl and disappear, caught up in a breeze. The girl next to him was on her phone, finger movements light and tantalising and suggestive. 

The girl was the first to notice him and John shot her a shaky smile, knees weak at the way she peered at him from under her long, glamorous lashes, gaze bright and penetrating. She returned the smile with a quirk of her red lips, one eyebrow twitching.

“Um. Sherlock?” John finally said, catching the boy’s attention and saving himself from anymore embarrassing reactions to the girl at Sherlock’s side. “Hello, it’s John, John Watson?”

“Yes,” Sherlock smiled and took the offered hand John thrust at him, holding his food in one hand clumsily. “Hello.”

John waited for more but was only presented with an amused and impatient gaze, and so he cleared his throat and turned to address them both, “Do you mind if I…sit with you? It’s such a lovely day and I wanted to eat outside, would be nice to have some company? Do you mind? You and your…friend?”

Sherlock blinked slowly, took a deep drag of his cigarette and then let it out in a ring that gradually grew until it broke apart at the seams, “This is Irene Adler. Not really a friend.”

“Oh?” John frowned before he bent down to offer his hand to her with a charming smile. “Hello Irene, nice to meet you.”

“Pleasures all mine,” She replied, and John felt his heart leap into his throat at the smooth, silkily texture of her voice, and the soft, warm press of her palm and fingers. “Ignore him. He’s just in a sulk because he was kicked out of his lesson, today. I am his friend, of sorts…I like him at any rate.”

John nodded and smiled again, standing back up to look at Sherlock, “Ah. Right…”

“She isn’t,” Sherlock clarified, shooting Irene an annoyed stare. “We just met.”

“Stop being so pedantic,” Irene said dismissively but friendly.

John glanced between the two with bemusement and then moved forward to sit down on Sherlock’s other side, leaning against the tree with a smile and a sigh, “So, why were you kicked out?”

“A minor altercation,” Sherlock replied flippantly.

“He set the room on fire,” Irene remedied with a smug, curling smile directed at John around Sherlock’s legs.

John snorted with laughter and looked up at Sherlock in disbelief, “You didn’t? This is why you can’t have nice things,” he teased.

Sherlock scoffed petulantly and suddenly sat down, blocking John’s view of a giggling, overly attractive Irene, “I didn’t set the entire room on fire. Just my part of the table,” he explained, breath tinged with smoke. “And it only went up in flames because of the imbecile I was partnered with, who clearly doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. Yet I was blamed for it. I argued my case, but my lecturer wasn’t having any of it so I just walked out. I wasn’t kicked out, I left.”

“Right…you sure it wasn’t your fault as well as his?” John asked before he frowned and shuffled around to face Sherlock, crossing his legs and biting into a sandwich. “What do you do anyway? What do you study? I never asked.”

“Forensics,” Sherlock drawled, taking another drag and then blowing the smoke out of the side of his mouth, through his teeth. “Amongst other things.”

John swallowed his mouthful of bread and chicken and lifted his brow, “You’re on more than one course? How do you cope? I can barely manage juggling my Medicine course alongside my Uni activities.”

“Liar. You cope just fine,” Sherlock responded with a boyish grin that dropped from his face as Irene leaned over his shoulder to wink at John.

“What sort of…activities do you partake in?”

John licked his lips shyly and shrugged like it was no big deal, “Just Rugby mostly.”

“Ooo. Such a…physical game,” Irene purred, flashing John two rows of perfectly white teeth. “Do you like to get physical, John? How often do you get physical? Show a girl some of those Rugby muscles.”

John blinked at her and laughed nervously, and Sherlock shot her a sideways glance that made her smile sharpen into a grin, “And you, Irene? What do you study?” John asked her, unnecessarily flexing his biceps as he reached for his drink and took a long swig of it with over exaggerated movements.

“This and that,” she replied mysteriously.

“Psychology, English Lit, and Dance, to be exact,” Sherlock amended, to which Irene chuckled attractively, impressed as she kissed his cheekbone, face misted in smoke as Sherlock puffed on his cigarette. 

John looked between the two and took another bite of his sandwich. They made a pretty picture, the both of them. Irene was so close that her dark hair was mixing with Sherlock’s, his curls clinging to the stylised sweep of her fringe. Their eyes met and John felt his confidence falter. The way Irene looked at Sherlock was something John had seen before, the smouldering, eager, and playful way she leaned against him, red tipped fingers curling into the collar of Sherlock’s shirt collar to touch his skin, told John all he needed to know and he mourned the loss of a promising conquest with as much dignity as he could, pushing aside the rising jealousy and disappointment. Until Irene shot the same gaze at him, body oozing temptation and eyelashes fluttering with an air of flirtation. 

John smiled in response and chanced a quick glance at Sherlock. Sherlock was looking at him as well, his eyes narrowed, lower lids squinting as he inspected John with a piercing look that actually made a tingling shiver shoot up John’s spine. With the two of them staring at him, John felt caught and splayed open, and chewed slowly on his mouthful of sandwich, unable move let alone look away. 

Sherlock tilted his head and leisurely smirked, and John wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into.


End file.
